the times | Saturday August 1 2020 1GM 27
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Women are fighting back against porn culture
For too long, the fetishising of pain has encouraged killers to think they can claim their partner wanted rough sex
Buy prints or signed copies of Times cartoons from our Print Gallery at timescartoons.co.uk or call 020 7711 7826seeks vengeance after her drink is
spiked in a bar by a man who rapes
her. Yet from Coel’s rich, multi-
thread story, a strong theme
emerges: casual hook-up culture
with its porn-fed narrative about
what constitutes excitement and
pleasure is in fact soulless, grim and
perilous.
Arabella’s friend boasts that she’s
picked up two separate men for a
threesome, the epitome of cool-girl
sex, until she realises the pair
conspired. The fantasy was theirs not
hers. A Grindr-obsessed gay man is
sexually assaulted in a random
hook-up. Cumulatively, a message
evolves: get wasted in a bar, render
yourself incapable of judgment and
the sex you have is likely to end up
non-consensual.
In an Economist podcast, Coel,
who was drugged and assaulted
herself, utters that most old-
fashioned word: “responsibility”. She
is critical of a “two-dimensional view,
where there is a victim and a
criminal, and the criminal did
everything and you did nothing,
everything happened to you” as
“such a powerless way of seeing life”.
Women should regain the power
to uncouple their desires from a
porn-soaked culture that cares
nothing for their pleasure, or even
their safety. But instead fetishises
their tears.“gone wrong”. Sixty British women
have died this way, including Grace
Millane, 22, killed in New Zealand by
a man who said she’d asked him to
strangle her. He was convicted of
murder. Many others were not,
including the killer of Natalie
Connolly, of Worcestershire, whose
partner John Broadhurst told police
that although he’d left her overnight
at the bottom of stairs with blunt-
force head injuries and had sprayed
her body with bleach to erase blood
stains, she’d died through consensual
sex. His 44-month sentence for
manslaughter became a catalyst for
change, ending with Alex Chalk, the
justice minister, agreeing in June to
ban the “rough-sex defence” in the
forthcoming domestic abuse bill.
The assault conviction of Charlie
Elphicke, the former MP, for trying to
kiss young women and grope their
breasts has been rightly celebrated.
So why does the rise in unwanted,
porn-fuelled slaps and hands to the
throat during casual hook-up sex go
unchallenged? Because the so-called
“sex positive” feminism that is
preached to young women brokers no
criticism of porn or the sex trade.
Rather, it says, these are empowering.
Yet watching the BBC drama I May
Destroy You, I wondered if the tide is
turning. Discussion of this series has
focused on how Arabella (played by
Michaela Coel, the show’s creator)Tumblr post come-on photos with
their own hands around their
throats. Be a cool girl: not one of
Andy Anokye’s prudes.
The latest Netflix hit is a Polish
series called 365 Days about a
woman who is kidnapped and
violently sexually assaulted for a year
by a “dominant” mafia boss. In a
TikTok video watched by 33 million
users, a young woman shows the
aftermath of viewing 365 Days with
her boyfriend: her arms, thighs, and
torso are covered in livid bruises. Shebeams and winks at the camera.
Whether these injuries are real or
not, the message is it’s sexy to like
rough stuff.
Meanwhile Cosmopolitan, in its list
of ten racy things to try during
lockdown, included “breath-play” ie
depriving someone of oxygen during
sex by means of strangulation. Cosmo
removed this highly dangerous
notion after an outcry by women’s
groups including We Can’t Consent
To This. Their campaign drew
attention to a worldwide growth in
deaths of women after men claimed
that a rough-sex game had simplyCasual hook-up culture
with its porn narrative
is soulless and perilous
A
fter the court was told
that he’d slapped women,
made them lie in icy
water, covered their faces
with bleach-soaked cloths,
held one at gunpoint and rammed a
mobile phone down another’s throat,
Andy Anokye said it was only a sex
game. He called it “catch me, rape
me”, and said while “prudes” might
find it unpalatable, this “was the sex I
enjoy and the sex some women
enjoyed too”.
The more his five victims wept, the
more Anokye (a musician known as
Solo 45), was turned on. His sexual
kink, he told Bristol crown court
before he was jailed for 24 years, is
“dacryphilia”: he is aroused by
women’s tears.
These days, who isn’t? Type
“choke” or “rough sex” into Pornhub
and one click away are thousands of
clips showing naked women with
men’s hands grasping windpipes,
wild-eyed, puce-faced, mascara
streaming down cheeks. Consensual
or coerced? PornHub has featured
“teen crying and getting slapped
around” videos of trafficked girls.
Anokye thought the women he
abused were “fake crying”, but didn’t
care either way. Neither do millions
who watch porn.
The narrative of mainstream
pornography has shifted far from
naughty pizza delivery boys. It
involves slaps, pulled hair and,
increasingly, a hand around the
throat. Porn’s defenders who claim
it’s mere fantasy might explain why
38 per cent of British women under
40 report being choked, hit or spat
on in otherwise ordinary sexual
encounters. Anokye didn’t think he
was a sadist; he just liked slapping
and thought it “pretty common in
this day and age”.
Porn-raised young men are led to
believe that physical abuse is not just
permissible but what girls want.
Young women, ever eager to please,
yearn to be popular and desirable. So
they’d better not “kink shame” a guy
who wants to try what he saw online.
Even if it hurts. After all, from high
heels to waxing, femininity is
predicated on no pain, no gain. So
why not sex too. Forget your own
pleasure: does he think you’re hot?
“Choke me, Daddy” read T-shirts
available on Etsy in pink. “Treat me
like a princess and choke me,” says a
birthday card. Teenage girls onJanice
Turner@victoriapeckham